by Kay Curry
Northwest Asia Weekly
When does justice become revenge? If someone kills your family and you go after them, is that justice or revenge? Also, do you put them in jail or kill them for a tit-for-tat thing?
The latter is something Black Adam prefers, boy, can’t he stop being roasted? Black Adam, the latest in a DC Comics film adaptation, has too much moralization, too many characters, and too many damn broken rock music.
I really hate how DC and Marvel keep preaching to us their masquerading as universal morality. It’s like the whole country, oh, I don’t know, America is 100% down on them. For Marvel, it’s always “I have to save X people, not the world”, and for DC, it’s “Heroes don’t kill people.”
Everyone knows Black Adam’s iconic answer: “I do.”
I fully support people of their own beliefs. I am tired of being preached. We all love antiheroes like Black Adam, but why do these mythical moral heroes still bombard us? Also, how about just showing us instead of telling us? The constant nagging dialogue, especially from Hawkman to Black Adam about how he needs to drag the line is just annoying and excessive.
“His darkness makes him a hero you can’t,” defends Black Adam’s No. 2 fan Adriana, who could be the future Isis, but I’m not going to promise that because apparently DC and Marvel Neither would do this to come to the origin stories of these characters. His number one fan is Adriana’s son Amon, a collection of all the characters in the comics named Amon, and a constant reminder of Black Adam’s own son – a new story when the comics first came out in 1945.
Black Adam – or Tess Adam, which translates to Mighty Adam – is more evil in the first part of the comic. He lives in Egypt and is a member of the Pharaoh’s family who betrayed everyone when he was betrayed by Shazam’s daughter Blaze. Black Adam was the one who originally had the power of Shazam, and later Billy Baston was chosen because Black Adam was punished for using this power to do bad things. There is little fact that Baston’s father CC found Black Adam’s tomb in the first story – here, it was Adriana and a betrayed companion Ismail who lived in what is now Kahn in North Africa The country of Dak, not Egypt, was occupied by the conquerors. Recently, it was Amon and Adriana who asked Black Adam to save their “gang”.
The problem is that the Justice League has heard wind of Black Adam being released from his prison/grave and is preventing him from, well, being himself.
Mainly because they have an article on Wikipedia about all the bad things he does, but don’t really know him. So he was a threat to them, but a help to the besieged people of Karndak. They don’t know that he did bad things because the former king of Karndak murdered his son and also because he was too crazy to control his powers, which of course he can work on.
The Justice League sent a strangely mismatched team to quell the menace: four heroes, and four heroes are too many. Why can’t we just have the origin story of Black Adam, which would have been enough, and put it in a sequel?
Exactly, it’s not confusing, it’s just too much happening. Confusingly, why send two complete newbies who have never completed their mission – the Whirlwind and the Atomic Smasher – against one of the most powerful creatures ever created?
The original user of magic. By the power of God? Also, rocks. who could be god. Where the hell are the others when the Karndak implodes and explodes at the same time? Did the Justice League simply not check in with their strangely ambiguous boss Amanda Waller?
Maybe it’s an example of all the shit shows going on around the world, no one really does anything, right? outside the area itself. Maybe a human hero or two will volunteer to sign up for a war that isn’t theirs (I’m looking at you, Andy Huynh and Alexander Drueke, in Ukraine).
I always wonder if you are given real life analogies in these types of didactic films. Is the imperialist America? Did Black Adam suddenly become Donald Trump when he said “We’re not just free, we’re great”? It’s hard to ignore this.
Let’s talk about music. Here’s my take: If the movie wasn’t “Little Driver,” it wouldn’t need constant rock music—especially if the music wasn’t even synced properly with the action. What is the great, long silence in the world before Black Adam does something bad, because we all seem to be waiting for this song to play? It’s unforgivably distracting and tells me there’s a hole somewhere in your creation that you have to fill with music. A good movie doesn’t need any music. It should be supplemented, not carried.
“Black Adam” is surprisingly slow, and even with the music, the humor rarely pops. As a provocateur and hawkman, Amon is not convincing, please stop worrying. The only connection I like is the one between Black Adam and Doctor Fate, played by the graceful old Pierce Brosnan. There’s too much clutter and not enough of Black Adam’s amazingness. The audience loves him, so he gets constant chatter from the Justice League’s Lily White team to prevent him from taking strict “revenge” (or justice) against people by killing them instead of saving them when they do bad things, because Eagleman is so easy to do that it hardly makes any sense.
Black Adam, film and character, is in control every moment. Dwayne is flawless and has said what the role means to him. Please let him do his thing. He has figured out Black Adam, even if his creator couldn’t.
Why make him a hero just to knock him out? Because I do think the audience sees him as a hero, not even an anti-hero. In this day and age, anything else is obsolete. The world is grey and we should have established that by now.
“Black Adam” has been widely released and is playing in a theater near you.
Kay can reach info@nwasianweekly.com.
